Drinking coffee reduces risk of basal cell skin cancer

Coffee is one of the most popular beverages around the world. Nothing feels more refreshing than waking to a fresh aroma of brewed coffee. Coffee has been associated with many health benefits like stroke in women, Alzheimer, and so on. A study establishes link between coffee and skin cancer.

What is skin cancer?
Skin Cancer are growths on skin with differing causes and varying degrees of malignancy. The three most common malignant skin cancers are basal cell cancer, squamous cell cancer, and melanoma, each of which is named after the type of skin cell from which it arises. Skin cancer generally develops in the epidermis (the outermost layer of skin), so a tumor can usually be seen. This means that it is often possible to detect skin cancers at an early stage.

Unlike many other cancers, only a small minority of those affected will actually die of the disease, though it can be disfiguring. Melanoma survival rates are poorer than for non-melanoma skin cancer, although when melanoma is diagnosed at an early stage, treatment is easier and more people survive.

Coffee and its health effects
Coffee is a brewed beverage with a dark, slightly acidic flavor prepared from the roasted seeds of the coffee plant, called coffee beans. The beans are found in coffee cherries.

Coffee contains several compounds, which are known to affect human body chemistry. The most important is caffeine which acts as a stimulant. The coffee bean itself contains chemicals which are mild psychotropics for humans as a defense mechanism. Coffee also contains a currently unknown chemical agent which stimulates the production of cortisone and adrenaline, two stimulating hormones.

Coffee may help prevent the most common type of skin cancer
Researcher Fengju Song, PhD, postdoctoral fellow in dermatology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, carried a study and concluded that women who consume more than three cups of coffee per day, have a 20% lower risk of developing basal cell carcinoma than women who drink less than one cup a month. Men who drank more than three cups of coffee have a 9% lower risk.

Caffeine appears to be the major factor in this because those that drink decaffeinated coffee did not see any impact in cancer risk.

Researchers looked at the effects of coffee drinking on skin cancer risk in more than 110,000 people who participated in the Nurses’ Health Study and Health Professionals Follow-Up Study. The participants were followed for an average of 22 to 24 years. During this period, 25,480 cases of skin cancer were reported, including 22,786 basal cell carcinomas, 1,953 squamous cell carcinomas, and 741 melanomas.

The results showed that the amount of caffeinated coffee people drank was associated with the risk of basal cell carcinoma but not other types of skin cancer.